Death Struggle... Tough Sergeant Steiner commanded ten men, a German rear guard trapped fifty miles behind the Russian line. Their path to survival led straight through the entire enemy army. All the murderous hazards of war blocked their march—hunger, exhaustion, terror, treachery, death. Finally, Steiner and his men were no longer fighting for Führer or Fatherland, but for their naked, desperate lives... Acclaimed throughout Europe, The Cross of Iron has been hailed by American critics as "far more monumental than All Quiet on the Western Front" and "savagely powerful." One of the great war novels of all time, it is a memorable, magnificent portrait of the modern centurion—a towering drama of the death throes of a mighty army.